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The old Constitution has been rebuilt in parts, and repaired many times; so that little remains of the original vessel except her keel and her floor frames. These huge pieces of her framework, hewn by hand from solid oak, are the same that thrilled with the shock of the old guns, before the granite forts of Tripoli.
A quarter-of-an-hour later Captain Vavassour gave the order to tack; and while the frigate was in stays, plunging bows under, and quivering to her keel with the furious slatting of her canvas as she swept up into the wind, we had the satisfaction of seeing the Frenchman's mizen-topmast go over the side. "Now we have him!" ejaculated the Captain, in a tone of exultation.
The last bound that I gave, pitched me into the rigging of a small vessel on her beam ends, and I hardly had time to fetch my breath before she turned over. I scrambled up her bends, and fixed myself astride upon her keel. There I remained for two or three hours, when the hurricane was exhausted from its own violence.
As Leslie struck the water and floated there, supported by the life-buoy, the rudder and stern-post of the ship hove themselves slowly out of the water close alongside him until the keel, for a length of some thirty feet, was exposed; then the huge hull began to slide forward and away from him with an ever-quickening motion until, with a rush, a weird whistling of air escaping from the ship's interior that mingled horribly with the shrieks of those on deck, and a dull booming as the decks were burst up, the fabric plunged headlong and was gone!
Suddenly a roar, more terrific than the bursting of a volcano, was heard, followed by shrieks, and groans, and cries; a bright light was seen glancing over the water through the stern ports; the ship shook from her keel. The guitar fell from Donna Julia's hands. Mrs Armytage grasped her daughter's arm, expecting something more dreadful to follow, and believing that the ship was about to blow up.
If we stand here all day without putting our hand to the work, we shall not get the craft on an even keel."
At least that was the only chance he had; and inspired by this thought he drove his light wherry swiftly through the water, and felt the keel grate against the bank almost before he was prepared for it. The pursuers were still coming on, but did not appear to be distressing themselves.
The levitators screamed madly as they lost their purchase on the air, due to the ship's unstable keel. "We're goners!" someone shouted. "Kill that fool!" They bounced off a cliff, turned over and over like a tumbleweed. A cylindrical building, unexpected in this wilderness, loomed up. They seemed about to hit it, but floated past. The rock floor of the valley rushed up.
She was less of a wreck, in one way, than my own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of the water as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had been swept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone as though a sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decks clean.
For a minute, or more, things went well enough, when a breaker took the bows of the jolly-boat, lifted her nearly on end, and turned her keel uppermost. One scarcely knows how he gets out of such a scrape. We all came ashore, however, heels over head, people, pot, boat, and oars. The experiment was renewed, less the pitch and a pair of new shoes of mine, and it met with exactly the same result.
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